


Wishful Thinking

by Ballycastle_Bat



Series: DCTV Gen Bingo Card 1 [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Angst, Dark, Dark but kinda hopeful ending, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Hospitals, No Dialogue, character study kind of, mostly forced hospitalization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 22:51:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20514806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ballycastle_Bat/pseuds/Ballycastle_Bat
Summary: A look into why Don didn't return to the past with Nora.





	Wishful Thinking

**Author's Note:**

> [[Warnings: Addiction, etc.  
Notes: This fic is exactly what it says on the tin.  
Sources/disclaimers(?): this is most likely the most personal fic I've ever posted. I poured a lot of myself into it in some places. I've been wanting to look into addiction in the West family for ages based on my own experiences.
> 
> I have addicts on both sides of my family and I've been through adolescent inpatient programs. I was kind of worried about writing this. I didn't know if I was like, confident enough to put this out there? I did my best to not villainize anyone too heavily and put enough emphasis on Don's side, so it wasn't all about Iris. Any fault in this was a failure on my part but not an intentional one.
> 
> I've been kind of obsessed with Francine since she was briefly introduced. I always felt Wally was dangerously close to a line of being addict coded. (At least for me, all interpretations are valid). I wanted to explore that with Don.  
I also do not claim to be 100% up to date with what's considered "proper language" for these things. I only claim to draw from my own personal expierences with this and other similar topics.
> 
> Prompt: DCTV gen Bingo Square "Angst"]]
> 
>   


Nora wasn’t lying when she said it was just her and Mom at home. Because Don is currently admitted to an inpatient mental health center.

Don Allen had inherited more than his beautiful curls from his mother's side. He had always been an adrenaline junkie, reckless like Wally is. So Iris brushed it off at first as that West flame that they all had. 

When he started running around the city as a Vigilante as a teen, she didn’t blink beyond the usual amount. Yes she was overprotective still, of course. No, she did not like it. Anyone would worry about their teenage son trying to fight crime in the streets. The fact was though, that he was Barry's son. She knew this roadblock would come up eventually.

She was blind to the fact that he was getting high off the adrenaline. Which for her baby brother Wally, was enough and never developed into a real ongoing problem. Apart from the incident after Jesse got her powers. She just grounded him and tried to keep him under control, and it mostly worked. Mostly.

However, one day that wasn't enough so he headed down the slippery slope into substances. Mostly alcohol. The first time Iris saw him drinking, she brushed it off again as teenage behavior. She told him if he wants to dabble alcohol he had to do it in the house where she can see him. She was trying to be the responsible but understanding mom about it. She feared him locking up and hiding it if she pressed too hard. Just as she herself had as a teen.

But she quickly realises that this wasn't just your classic teenage exploration and rebellion. He ignores her rules. When he was sixteen he would be hospitalised for his excessive alcohol consumption. She would find dozens of bottles hidden away in his room that night.

Iris didn't know where to go from there. She was the typical clueless parent so she tried punishing him whenever she caught him with alcohol. She didn't see another option. She had tried the nice way and that didn't work. Neither did restrictions. It only seemed to make everything else worse. His irritability, and his impulsivity at an all time high by seventeen.

At seventeen it escalates. Bad. Joe tries to tell her he's showing signs, so does Caitlin, but she can't rationalise it. This is her son, her baby. _He's going to be okay._ She couldn't picture him as her mother: Dying in a hospital dying of an illness brought on by her addiction. Dying with twenty years of regret. She couldn't imagine Don like that. He had too much of his father in him, she had tried to rationalise. _ He was fine. He's Barry's son. He'll be fine. _ But her chest was tight.

He was not 'fine'.

Not even eighteen he comes home, too drunk to even speak coherently. He was definitely high too, eyes glassy and like saucers. His hands trembling so violently that Nora hoped she could steady them with her own. Then he gets into a fight with Iris over how much she shelters them. He brings up how she's definitely hiding something about their father. Nora tries to calm him down and he hugs her too tight and it _ hurts _.

Iris tries to intervene but he pushes her into the wall. It hurts, but not as much as seeing him like this. He'd immediately fallen to the floor, a mix of broken apologies endlessly flowing from his lips.

With tears in her eyes, Iris calls Cisco for help. All she manged to say is his name and Cisco knows. Don needs to go, and she cannot lift him on her own. Her baby was big now, as tall as his dad and built like his papa Joe was at his age. 

They take him to a nearby adolescent inpatient program. It takes them a few hours because Central is huge, there are a few teens in crisis ahead of them. Iris cries silently as she signs off on consent to restrain and sedate him if he becomes a danger. It made her sick to her stomach, but she doesn't know what else she can do. He needs stabilization while he goes through withdrawals. 

She never wanted to come to this, her to be sitting there, signing away her son's rights with a flick of her wrist. "Do what you need to do, so he can't hurt himself.”

Finally they get him a room. His roommate is a boy who’d been there a 48 hours and Don can tell he’s detoxing. It _ scares _ him. He doesn't feel like he belongs there. There's nothing wrong with him. This is all Iris’s fault, he thinks. He forces himself to believe it for a while. Because he's seventeen and withdrawing himself. Everyone is the enemy, when in reality the enemy is his own mind. His addiction, his need for a fix. The chemicals in his brain that failed him.

Some of the staff are nice, but the place still feels wrong to him. It smells weird, not quite like a hospital but has that same sterile feeling. Clinical and cold. More of the staff doesn't care than do. 

He’s nothing but another statistic to most of them. Just another teen from the city with a drug problem. Part because they took the wrong job and part because they've seen too many kids who leave only to return days later, or dont leave at all, not alive anyway. He starts to panic, he asks one of the night shift nurses what he should do, when he can leave. They don't offer any advice other than to give him something called a ‘skills sheet’ and tell him to fill it out. He's been there less than ten hours he doesn't even know what the damn thing is yet or how it's supposed to help when his brain on fire from the sobering process and the claustrophobia of the room. Something he would learn quickly: It doesn't. 

It's impossible to sleep. The pillows are made of some sort of plastic or vinyl. Even with the covers it's the worst feeling. The bed moves in weird ways when he sits in it. He can't sleep over the sounds of his roomate crying in pain. He can hear the night staff shuffling around outside the rooms. Doing checks. The doors are required to stay open. No privacy. He can't stay in the bathroom for more than one room check or he gets in trouble.

Iris finally gets home at three in the morning. Only for another fight to start between her and Nora. Nora is too young to understand that Don needs support that they cannot give him. That he is sick in a way that Caitlin isn't enough for right now. She just sees it as Iris punishing him again and sending him away, and maybe that's when they stop talking. 

Iris can't sleep the entire night, she just sits by her phone in case the hospital calls with news about Don. She feels like she abandoned him too. She has to keep telling herself that it's bigger than all of them, but it's hard. It doesn't help. She still left her son, who trusted her, who she was supposed to protect in that cold place. To suffer what he was suffering alone. She never thought this would happen. She thought this ended with her mother. No one warned her how strongly genetics could come into play. She thought she was safe. Thought her children were safe.

She goes in for visiting hours the very next day. He agrees to see her but he won't look at her. He can't. He knows something is wrong but he's too overwhelmed and he doesn't know how to deal with this. He points fingers, he resists. He hasn't filled out any of his own paperwork so he isn't allowed to go off unit for exercise or meals. They were playing basketball that day. He loved basketball. He essentially stays in his room apart from forced social hours where he has to sit in the commons. The hard blow of "Dad wouldn't have done this to me." Is cold and hollow, but still cuts Iris deeper than anything ever could.

He looks tired, and Iris can tell he's in pain. She knows Don. He wears his heart on his sleeve just like Barry. Both the twins did. The visit is painful, full of a violent back and forth between Don hurling curses and crying, promising to stop if Iris takes him home.

Before she leaves she tells him that she loves him and he lets her hug him. He's so tall. His head goes clear over hers. She has to pull him down to kiss his forehead, which he's irritable about.

Joe had warned her about the mood swings, as has the doctors. So she tried not to take it to heart, but it was hard. Especially paired with her own guilt and doubts. When she reached her car; that was when she really broke down. When everything became real all over again. She sat there in the parking lot for an immeasurable amount of time.

Days pass and it's the exact same. He's not responding to treatment or really to Iris even, but she comes every day. Everyday they sit across from each other in the commons area, or sit silently in his room.

Time passes, his roommate leaves, returns again. Only to leave to be buried. They start discussing residential programs for Don and he's resistant. He's holding out for his eighteenth birthday when he can be done with this.

Iris tired and she goes home, and Nora won't talk to her. She also won't let Nora in to see Don. They fight more about it, but Iris has to protect Nora, even if it's from Don who does love her.

Don spends a few years in and out of treatment when he finally accepts he has a problem, the damage is done. His relationship with Iris is strained, as it is with Nora. He spirals downward and when he's about to celebrate his five years clean and sober, when Nora is getting mixed up with Thawne. Don doesn't take the news well. He falls into a heavy relapse.

One night Nora gets a sick feeling in her stomach while using the speed force and rushes to Don. He was in the middle of an overdose when she removed his dampening chip, allowing his long dormant metahuman powers to heal his body. Nora laid with him on his bedroom floor, holding his head on her chest until the the power they inherited from their father did its work.

She tells him about her plan to save their father but sadly his response is that he cannot join her. He has to clean himself up, get back on that wobbly uneven road to recovery. So, she has to go without him, and he tells her he knows she can complete this mission on her own; to save their father.

So, Nora goes after a tearful goodbye to her twin outside of the rehab centre. She was ignorantly convinced that it will save her brother too. That's always been something Nora wanted more than anything: to take away her brothers problems and his pain. His vices and his fears. Being her father's daughter she had a hard time accepting that she couldn't save everyone. It hit even harder that she couldn't save her own brother. She naively saw this as an opportunity to save two lives. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Part of Don wanted to hope for that too, but he knew it was just wishful thinking. He would have to fight this battle, Barry or no Barry, but he was determined to.


End file.
